UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations is continuing to rush assistance to people affected by clashes in the war-torn far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and victims of violence at the hands of the Ugandan rebel group known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a UN commission said on Monday.

    Since December 28, more than 300 people have been killed during LRA attacks in north-eastern DRC, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the National Refugee Commission.

    There is no information yet from nine villages occupied for two days by the LRA. Congolese government forces are deployed in several villages to ensure the safety of civilians, but no military presence has been set up in the high-risk zone of Bangadi, the UN commission said.

    The LRA has been fighting Ugandan forces since the 1980s and which has since spilled into Sudan and the DRC.

    The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has distributed more than 20 tons of food to 7,300 internally displaced people and their host families affected by LRA violence, according to UN officials.

    In North Kivu province in eastern Congo, where hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes in recent months due to stepped up fighting between government forces and another rebel militia group known as the National Congress in Defense of the People, armed groups have blocked the road between the provincial capital Goma and the town of Rutshuru, UN officials said.

    This has led to further displacement. There have also been reports of houses being looted.

    Aid agencies too have warned about children being recruited as soldiers in the fighting, as well as on the large number of unaccompanied children who lack protection, UN officials said.

    UNCHR said that nearly 4,000 people were transferred from a camp in Kibati north of Goma, to settlements in Mugunga, but noted that all have since returned to Kibati.

    WFP plans to distribute 90 tons of food to a camp housing more than 1,000 people in Bambu which was hit by a large fire.

    The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that cholera, measles, sexually transmitted diseases and malnutrition were the key concerns in the region.